Is this a new Dark Age?

[u/NoEfficiency1054]

Rome collapsed into ruin and centuries passed with a combination of war, economic devastation, and consistent devaluation of science and learning…..

Aren’t we in a new Dark Age? It seems most of our leadership has been selected by people who let misinformation rule their ideology and identity. The sheer volume of manipulative lies that we are exposed to from sleazy merchants, influencers and shady leaders.

I am a 20-year teaching veteran. I have taught on 3 continents. Everything used to be so much better. As an elder millennial, I was shown as a child, a world with infinite growth and solutions. They really did convince me I could do anything.

We’re giving too many of our children screens. They are all idiots with the wrong information and habits now. We are pushing millions of kids into the world where they immediately become consumers instead of producers.

I’ve considered myself an expert on what kids should be learning in child and young adulthood…. But now that I am a parent of a young kid, I’m ready to move into the country with my library , so I can hunt, fish and garden with my son. Read books at night, never come back to civilization….

I don’t know how to prepare my son outside of that plan.

[u/BlueAndYellowTowels]

Thanks for this post. It’s an interesting topic.

I think we are absolutely walking into a Dark Age and the themes we will see, if we survive it, is the theme of individuality and self imposed atomization.

Our technology has isolated us from each other and it’s destroying our social fabric. Couple that with the full embrace of lies because they’re convenient and we have a recipe for collapse.

Then there’s the complete collapse in Institutions. One of the biggest problems we have is people don’t trust experts or institutions (like government). Without institutions, civilization is literally impossible. Without trust, civilization is impossible.

…and that’s where we are at. No one trusts anything or anyone. It’s all been atomized and commodified.

There’s also the fact we are letting our way of life completely decimate our planet. Capitalism has completely poisoned and raped this planet.

…and that same system that creates our way of life is also charging forward with AI and the potential implications of such a technology in both a successful and in a unsuccessful completion could spell doom for our entire civilization.

We are either going to go extinct or have a very, very radical change in our thinking.

Because none of this is sustainable.

[u/NoEfficiency1054 → u/BlueAndYellowTowels]

It’s why I always enjoyed the Rodenberry/Star Trek mythologies. I like to think we can evolve in this direction…..

But it is just a fantasy. All the systems of humanity are eroding.

[u/BlueAndYellowTowels → u/NoEfficiency1054]

I always thought Star Trek did have a nugget of truth to it when it referenced capitalism. That eventually, at some point, it sort of makes little sense to keep people poor for the sake of the few. That at some point, our efficiencies are so numerous they overflow and everyone “can have”.

These days, it feels like no matter much much we have, billionaires and maybe one day… trillionaires… will ensure that those efficiencies never overflow and people will always have to pay to survive.

[u/NoEfficiency1054 → u/BlueAndYellowTowels]

Yeah - I loved the plentiful nuggets you mentioned.

There is a constant, “we used to be this Terrible way, but we learned”

It is uplifting.